Chapter 1

If I had to identify the one thing that's gotten me in the most trouble over the years I'd have to say Facebook is a pretty good contender.

Maybe 'trouble' is the wrong word but 'naughtiness' doesn't really cover it. That suggests fun with no consequences and there are always consequences, particularly when other people have access to your computer and can read your messages.

The problem with Facebook is that it gives the illusion that you know someone, you see their status updates, their photos, and you comment, they reply, and you build an imaginary friendship with someone you barely know.

Often you've never met this person, but they're friends with a friend of yours, or they went to the same school, or they're part of a group that you're part of and so you feel close to them, you start to respond to this stranger with familiarity in the same way you do with your real life friends, things get out of control, one thing leads to another and suddenly you're in bed with your flatmates ex best friend, even though in real life you've never spoken a single word.

Afterwards you maybe regret your impulsiveness but it's fine because no one will ever know, after all, how could they ever find out?

Then your flatmate borrows your computer and a message pops up because you forgot to log out, he scrolls through curiously, then all hell breaks loose.

As I said, consequences.

So anyway, after changing your password, unticking the 'keep me logged in' box, resolutely clearing your cookies, history etc before switching off each night, you resolve to be more careful, sensible even.

You go through your friends list and cull anyone who's not an actual real life friend, clear your message history, perhaps even remove yourself from Facebook for a while. But eventually you fall back into old habits, adding a few people you went to school with but haven't seen since, girlfriends or boyfriends of your real friends (for photo tagging purposes only), a few work related contacts, nothing too risky, you learnt your lesson the first time round right?

Then one day you're home alone. Bored and wishing for a bit of excitement in your rather mundane existence. You've just had a shower and you're sitting on the bed with the laptop resting on your knees and up pops a message...

"Hello old bean, long time no speak! How the devil are you?"

Carl was in the year above me at school. I'd worked with him for a few months and dated his friend for a while but we'd never really hit it off. I was horribly shy at that age and he was one of the cool kids so every time I'd been near him I'd been struck dumb, leading him to label me a stuck up bitch and a snob. Since then I'd gone out of my way to avoid him and as he'd left school that year it wasn't too difficult. I'd heard from a friend that he'd moved to Spain shortly after.

Then out of the blue he'd invited himself to a mutual friends party a few months ago and that was the first time I'd seen him in 11 odd years. Mind you it was the first time my friend had seen him in that long as well, but they'd both lived in Spain for a while and now worked on the buses (different companies) and so had been exchanging horror stories about passengers and septic tanks via Facebook for a while.

Still, we both thought it was a bit odd that he'd turned up like that, but as he'd just split up with his girlfriend we figured he was probably just looking for an excuse to get out of the house. He turned up still in his work gear and gently took the piss out of us both for several hours before somehow persuading me to take pity on him and give him a lift home.

At the time I'd thought it a bit strange, I don't know why but I got the impression he wanted to try something and was hoping to get me alone. Unfortunately for him I also got tasked with dropping someone else back and so I left him at his door and, apart from a friend request on Facebook, had heard nothing since. That was six months or so ago.

"Good ta, how about you?" I replied and saw 'Carl is typing'

"Cold and on my way to work :-("

"Aww :p"

"Why, you gonna come visit me?"

"I could be tempted ;)"

"You up to much tonight?"

"Nope nowt. Why, you touting for another lift home? :p"

"Well if you're about at 00:51..."

"Sure why not. No point you walking in this weather. Although I've just had a shower and really can't be bothered to get dressed. Would it be bad to come pick you up in my dressing gown?"

"Nope, in fact I shall be disappointed if you don't now ;-)"

"You'll be disappointed if I pick you up naked?"

"You might get cold."

"True, I'll probably be cold in my dressing gown as well."

"I don't mind you being a bit nippy ;-)"

"I'll bet you don't. Perve! So where shall I pick you up?"

"Garage? Go under the bridge and park either side. I'll hunt you down ;-)"

"K see you then x"

"Look forward to it ;-) x"

See what I mean? It's just Facebook, it brings out the worst in me.

Unfortunately it was only 15:41 and I was already shattered. Staying up til 1am was going to be a bit of a struggle. Pulling my dressing gown tighter around me I went to the kitchen to make a coffee then sat at the computer and decided to add another chapter to one of my stories to kill some time.

Four hours and two chapters later I was falling asleep at the keyboard and decided I'd have to do something active before I passed out entirely. Unfortunately, it was a bit late in the day to organise anything and as expected the few people I sent messages to already had plans.

Then I had an idea. Instantly my mind rejected it as a really bad plan but it stuck in my head and I played around with it, analysing and reanalysing. At 21:00 I gave in. Grabbing some black patent heels and quickly applying make-up, I threw some clothes and a coat in a bag and headed down to my car.

The wind was cold through the folds of my dressing gown and I pulled it tighter around me as I walked. Tying the belt securely to prevent accidental slippage.

The dressing gown had been a gift from my father after one of his frequent trips to Hong Kong and was made up out of thin black satin with red piping around the edges. I figured with the heels and the bag it would pass as a dress providing no one looked too closely, besides it was dark outside and I was sure there would be plenty of girls wearing less clothing than me.

The dressing gown reached almost down to my knees although a stray gust of wind could be dangerous in blowing the edges apart, I'd have to be careful not to accidentally expose myself to the wrong person. Not that I was exactly planning to expose myself to anyone deliberately...

Parking up outside the depot I slipped on the heels and coat before striding confidently into the main garage. The lights were still on in the maintenance shed and so I headed there first, calling a greeting to the plump, balding guy in overalls, currently standing in the pit beneath a silver Ford Focus.

"Working late again Paul?"

"Yeah, bloody kids are both getting married next year. You think once they hit 18 they'll move out and start looking after themselves but no, it's 'Dad, I need money for this and dad, I need money for that'," he moaned.

"Just wait," I teased, "next they'll be having kids of their own and then it'll be 'Dad, I need you to babysit!'"

"Oh don't," he groaned, laughing, "nah they're good kids really, nice to see them finally settling down proper, just wish they could've gone eloped or something instead of this whole white wedding palaver."

I grinned, handing him a spanner. Paul was okay. He did most of the repairs on my car out of hours at the garage on mates rates (and with the amount of mileage my car did there were a lot of repairs). He did the same for a lot of the other drivers as well, working on their cars while they were out on the road, providing there were no buses in need of fixing of course.

I'd been at school with both of his boys and they'd both done alright for themselves, one a mechanic, the other something techno geeky to do with engineering race cars. I'd also been best friends with his niece and as her mother was a bit of an alcoholic and mine was just plain weird we'd both spent a fair amount of our childhood hanging around the house or the garage, generally annoying everyone and getting in the way, so we went back a long way, almost family you could say.

"What you doing here then Missy?" he asked jokingly, "I'm sure you didn't get all dressed up nice just to come down and pester me. Off to meet some young fella I'll bet?"

"Kind of," I grinned. "Got conned into giving Carl a lift home and thought I'd go annoy him for a few hours, save me falling asleep."

"Oh," Paul smirked knowingly, "like that is it?"

"No," I laughed, "get your mind out of the gutter! He's broken his car again. I'm just being nice. Now wanna give me an idea where I can find him?"

"Pfft," he snorted, "you? Nice? Pull the other one! Think he's in 731 tonight, route 5, but the office is all locked up now. Steve's on night bus tonight though, if you grab him before he leaves I'm sure he'll drop you down to town..."

"Cheers Paul," I said, bending down to give him a kiss before thinking better of it and blowing him one instead.

"No worries," he said, wiggling his fingers from under the car "you youngsters have fun."

"Dirty old man," I flung over my shoulder as I headed out the back to find Steve. The sound of Paul's laughter followed me through the open door.

I hopped off the bus as Steve pulled into the stop, hurrying up the hill to the main stop. It was just gone 22:00 and Steve had told me Carl would just be finishing his 'lunch' break.

On the course of the journey over Steve had explained to me that there should be a bus every 6 minutes on both sides, westbound leaving at 00, 06 etc and eastbound leaving at 04, 10 etc.

There were no reported delays and the first westbound stop was just over a minute away from the main stop, meaning that I had just over two minutes to cross the road and wait for the eastbound bus back to begin again if he wasn't on either of those first two.

Steve had offered to put a call out to find where 731 was at the moment but I'd persuaded him not to, wanting to surprise Carl and fearing that any request for location on the radio would make him suspicious.

We'd decided on this one stop bus hopping as the both the most efficient way of tracking him down and also the warmest method. Although we knew vaguely where Carl had been at lunch, we didn't know if he'd gone east or west afterwards and as the route was almost 3 hours in total, waiting for him at the one stop would mean a minimum wait of around 20 minutes and a maximum of 2 hours and I wasn't really dressed for the cold.